Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-12-13-Speech-2-018"
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"en.20051213.6.2-018"2
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".
Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, this year we are once again debating the Community budget at second reading. It is my duty to present amending budget No 8. As in other years, as we Members of this Parliament well know, we are facing the same budgetary problems relating to execution and political representativeness. With regard to the 2005 budget alone, 10% of payment appropriations have not been able to be used, appropriations that you, ladies and gentlemen, voted for in December of last year. Furthermore, we are going to have to return EUR 3 800 million to the Member States, since it has not been possible to commit that money in the decisions that we MEPs had voted for.
The political message we are sending to the European citizens every year is very disappointing. Commissioner, representatives of the Council, when this Parliament votes for budgetary appropriations, it does so with the hope and desire that they are correctly executed by everybody. I believe that this is the lesson that we must learn this year, and let us hope that the execution is better during 2006.
It is difficult to establish the extent to which the European Commission, the Member States or this Parliament are responsible for this situation, which is repeated year after year. We in this Parliament vote every year for budgetary appropriations in accordance with our own political debate and the interests that we believe our electors bring to this Chamber, and that is why we are here. We vote according to what we believe are the Union’s interests, in terms of foreign policy, internal policy and the Structural Funds. We must acknowledge that the European Commission makes more effort every year to better implement policies, the budgetary mandates that we are given as European parliamentarians. And we are aware that the Member States make an effort year after year both in order to fund the budget and in order to implement Community policies.
But it can be deduced from the execution figure every year that something is still failing in the process of budgetary allocation of the appropriations that we vote for and in their final application, both in the Member States and in Community programmes.
Amending budget No 8, which I am presenting for your approval, includes, amongst other things, returning EUR 3 800 million to the Member States. We know that this is good news for the Finance Ministers of the Member States, since this is a sum that they do not have to incorporate into the Community budget in order to fund the 2005 financial year. Nevertheless, from a European point of view, it is not good news, because the saving results from a very significant under-execution in payment appropriations corresponding to the Structural Funds.
During the 2005 budgetary procedure, we agreed with the Council a significant reduction in the Structural Funds, below our first reading of the budget, and also below the preliminary draft budget presented by the Commission. We also agreed a joint statement with the other two institutions, in which the Council committed itself to presenting an amending budget which would include the payment appropriations necessary to pay Structural Funds, in the event that the execution was as expected.
During October, the European Commission presented us with a first draft of amending budget No 8, which talked about certain real budgetary needs; it also talked about EUR 600 million in Structural Funds, which should have been included in the Community budget. In the end, none of that happened.
During November, the Commission altered its figures on the basis of the news about budgetary execution reaching it from the Member States and, in the end, what were funding requirements have been turned into surpluses. Even with this return of EUR 3 800 million, there could be a surplus of payment appropriations in the Structural Funds at the end of the year.
Ladies and gentlemen, we can only interpret this as a bad thing. It is bad news, both for the 2006 budget of Mr Pittella, and for the negotiation of the financial perspective. The Union’s budget can never be drawn up solely according to the principle of saving, but rather according to the principle of effectiveness and European added value.
Mr President, where is the European added value in returning payment appropriations to the Finance Ministers year after year? This is not a good way to produce a Community budget or to build a truly effective Europe."@en1
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